The Morning After: Tuesday, September 26th 2017

Sony to 'welcome back' Wii owners with PS4 remakes

Sony is positioning the PlayStation 4 to capture a returning audience who skipped the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in favor of the Nintendo Wii during the previous console generation, Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House told Eurogamer this week.

"Our big opportunity is to welcome back an audience much earlier in the lifecycle that possibly bought into the Wii previously," House said. "[O]ur consumer data suggests some of those people are already coming in now and that's what's contributing to the really great sales we've had."

Sony plans to introduce the returning audience to a slate of remastered and rereleased games from the last console generation, starting with this month's launch of The Last of Us Remastered for the PlayStation 4. Sony's PlayStation Now service will also offer a number of streamed classics upon its launch.

"I hesitate to say this because I know committed gamers may roll their eyes about it," House admits, "but there's an opportunity with some of the remastering or re-imagining from PS3 franchises that will potentially find an audience that hasn't played them in the previous generation because they skipped that generation."

House continued: "That bodes well for us as a platform, but it bodes well for developers and publishers as well. I've always looked with envy at the movie industry about what a great job they're able to do with taking content and making it work. Disney is the best example of this, right, of taking classic content and reintroducing it to audiences over time."